Las Vegas City School board member Gloria Lovato-Pacheco took a stand for healthful meals during a recent board meeting. She was the only “no” vote to award contracts for cafeteria food service products to several vendors.

In doing so, she said she wants fewer processed items being served to the district’s students.

The chief of the New Mexico Highlands University police department says that, although he hadn’t been aware of it until recently, his department had been maintaining a federally required crime blotter.

Chief Donato Sena said a dispatcher is in the process of going through the log to ensure that it is complete.

University officials had previously said that the blotter wasn’t being kept under Sena but that it had been kept under the previous police chief’s administration.

ALBUQUERQUE — A Secret Santa and Mrs. Claus have given a dozen military families in Albuquerque a very special Christmas gift by paying off layaway lists that included toys for children.

Marie Vigil, manager of the Kirtland Air Force Base’s store, told KOAT that a retired military couple who wanted to remain anonymous walked into the base’s store over the weekend and paid off the lists of 12 families.

NEW YORK — The good news is that Wall Street experts think stock prices will rise more than 10 percent next year. The bad news is that they expected big gains in 2011 and got nearly zero instead.

It’s forecasting time on Wall Street, and once again the pros are trying to predict the unpredictable. History suggests their target price for stocks by the end of 2012 will prove too high or too low. They might even get the direction wrong — predicting a gain when there’s a loss.